oom with a View Forster A Room with a View E.M. FORSTER Level 6 Retold by Hilary Maxwell-Hyslop Series Editors: Andy Hopkins and Jocelyn Potter Contents page Introduction V PART ONE The English in Italy 1 Chapter 1 The Pension Bertolini 1 Chapter 2 In Santa Croce without a Guidebook 8 Chapter 3 Lucy Witnesses a Tragedy 15 Chapter 4 Possibilities of a Pleasant Outing 22 Chapter 5 The English Guests Drive Out in Carriages 29 PART TWO The English in England 37 Chapter 6 Lucy’s Engagement 37 Chapter 7 Who Should Rent Cissie Villa? 43 Chapter 8 Cecil’s Unwelcome Involvement with Cissie Villa 49 Chapter 9 An Unexpected Bathe Shocks the Ladies 54 Chapter 10 Charlotte Bartlett Comes to Stay 61 Chapter 11 The Disaster of Cecil’s Library Book 67 Chapter 12 Lucy Lies to George and Cecil 74 Chapter 13 Lucy Decides to Go to Greece 81 Chapter 14 Lucy Discovers Her True Feelings 88 Chapter 15 Return to the Pension Bertolini 96 Activities 100 Introduction ‘You can change love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. The poets are right. Love lasts for ever! A Room with a View is set at the beginning of the twentieth century. Lucy Honeychurch is a young English woman on holiday in Italy with her older cousin, Charlotte Bartlett, who is acting as her chaperone. They are staying in Florence at an Italian pension for British guests, but are disappointed with the poor view from their windows. While they are discussing their misfortune, they are interrupted by a guest at another table, an Englishman called Mr Emerson, who has heard their conversation. He and his son, George, are both in rooms that offer beautiful views of Florence, but Mr Emerson offers to exchange rooms with the two unhappy ladies. At first, Charlotte refuses. This is partly because she does not want to accept a favour from anybody, but it is also because Mr Emerson and his son come from a lower social background. Eventually, however, she changes her mind about Mr Emerson s offer. Over the next few days, Lucy develops a strange liking for the Emersons, who are considered socially unacceptable by the other guests. After a number of adventures, Lucy realises with horror that George is in love with her. But even more worrying and confusing for her is the fact that she feels mysteriously attracted to him. Lucy returns to England and her familiar world of tennis and tea parties. She becomes engaged to the intellectual, socially well-connected Cecil Vyse, which pleases her mother. But her experience in Italy has changed her. It has opened doors to new possibilities, and somewhere deep inside her she cannot forget George Emerson... v society that would never have understood or accepted them. The placing of the first part of the story in Italy is significant. For Forster, as for many other people at that time, Italy was a place of freedom and sexual expression. Italy offered an atmosphere where raw passion was a possibility, unlike the narrow-mindedness of traditional English society. Lucy’s experiences in Italy completely change her view of the world. She would never, for example, have been kissed by a boy who worked on the railways or witnessed a murder in a public square if she had stayed in the small, safe, protected world of Windy Corner. Without these experiences, her development as a human being might never have begun, and she would never have discovered the road to true happiness. Edward Morgan Forster was born in 1879 into Victorian England, a world without cars, aeroplanes or television. Fie lived through a period of enormous social change, and died in 1970, the same year that the Beatles split up. He was an only child, and his father was an architect who died when Forster was a year old. He went to school in Kent and to Cambridge University, after which he travelled around Europe with his mother. He continued to live with his mother in Surrey until her death in 1945. He travelled widely during his lifetime, including visits to Italy, Greece, Germany and India, and he used his observations of the English abroad in his novels. During the winter of 1916— 17, he met and fell in love with a seventeen-year-old boy in Alexandria, Egypt, and was heartbroken when the young man died of a serious illness in 1922. He worked in India in the early 1920s, and wrote his most successful novel, A Passage to India, after his return. A Passage to India was the last of his novels to be published during his lifetime. After 1924, Forster wrote very little fiction apart from short stories intended only for himself and a small circle of friends. He did not, however, stop writing completely. He wrote a couple of plays, the story for a film (A Diary for Timothy, 1945) and, in 1951, the words for Billy Budd, an opera by his friend Benjamin Britten. People disagree about why Forster stopped writing novels, but it is thought that the world was changing too quickly for him. The world that he was familiar with had disappeared, and he did not understand the new world enough to write about it. In the 1930s and 40s, Forster became a successful broadcaster on BBC radio. After the death of his mother, he accepted an academic position at Kings College, Cambridge. In 1960, he was called as a witness for the defence in the trial of the publishers of a famous novel by D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which was facing a ban. The publishers won the case. Forster had five novels published in his lifetime: Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924). A sixth novel, Maurice, was not published until 1971, a year after his death. A seventh novel, Arctic Summer, remained unfinished. A Room with a View may paint an interesting picture of a world that disappeared many years ago, but its emotional drama is still very powerful. Lucy’s struggle to make sense of her feelings towards the two very different men in her life is as relevant now as it was a century ago. The director James Ivory made a famous film of the story for the cinema in 1986. IX PART ONE The English in Italy Chapter 1 The Pension Bertolini ‘The Signora* should not have done it/ said Miss Charlotte Bartlett. ‘She should not have done it at all. She promised us south rooms with a view, close together. Instead, we are in north rooms, facing inwards and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!’ ‘And she comes from London!’ said her young cousin, Miss Lucy Honeychurch, who had been disappointed by the accent of the pension’s owner. She looked at the two rows of English people who were sitting at the table; at the row of white bottles of water and red bottles of wine; at the pictures of royalty and a famous poet that hung in heavy frames on the wall. ‘Charlotte, don’t you feel that we might be in London, not Florence? I can hardly believe that all kinds of other things are just outside. I suppose it’s because I’m so tired. I wanted so much to see the Arno. The rooms the Signora promised us in her letter would have looked over the river. She should not have done it. Oh, it is a shame!’ ‘Any little room is all right for me,’ Miss Bartlett said, ‘but it does seem hard that you shouldn’t have a view.’ Lucy felt that she had been selfish. ‘Charlotte, you mustn’t spoil me; of course, you must look over the Arno too. I meant that. The first vacant room in the front - ’ ‘You must have it,’ said Miss Bartlett, part of whose travelling expenses were paid by Lucy’s mother. Miss Bartlett frequently referred to this generosity. ‘No, no. You must have it.’ ‘I insist on it. Your mother would never forgive me, Lucy.’ ‘She would never forgive me! * Signora: the Italian title for a woman; Mrs or madam 1 The two ladies’ voices grew louder - and in fact a little cross. They were tired, and wanting to appear unselfish, they argued. Some of the other guests looked at each other, and one of them leant forward over the table and actually interrupted their argument. ‘I have a view,’ he said. ‘My room has a view.’ Miss Bartlett was surprised. She knew the man was not from a similar social background, even before she glanced at him. He was an old man, of heavy build, with a fair, shaven face and large eyes. There was something childish in those eyes, though it was not the childishness of extreme old age. ‘This is my son,’ said the old man. ‘His name’s George. He has a view too.’ ‘Ah,’ said Miss Bartlett, stopping Lucy, who was going to speak. ‘What I mean,’ he continued, ‘is that you can have our rooms, and we’ll have yours. We’ll change.’ The better class of tourist was shocked at this, and sympathetic to the newcomers. Miss Bartlett, in reply, said, ‘Thank you very much indeed; that is impossible.’ ‘Why?’ said the old man, with both fists on the table. ‘Because it is quite impossible, thank you.’ ‘You see, we don’t like to take — ’ began Lucy. Her cousin again stopped her.